Washington, D.C., 4 October 2025 (PAHO) – The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), in collaboration with Panama’s Ministry of Health (MINSA) and other sector stakeholders, supported the national process to advance the implementation of the Human Resources for Health Information System (known in Spanish as SIRHS), aimed at optimizing the management and planning of the country’s health workforce.
The SIRHS —available at https://sirhs.minsa.gob.pa—is a key tool for planning, managing, and monitoring the health workforce, strengthening evidence-based decision-making, and enhancing the country’s capacity to respond to the population’s needs.
During working sessions with MINSA, national boards, and the Contraloría de la República, participants applied PAHO’s mapping and strategic dialogue methodologies to assess progress, identify challenges, and key agreements to continue strengthening the SIRHS.
The diagnostic exercise helped identify strategies to address fragmentation in data production and use, harmonize the efforts of various decision-making bodies that shape the national health workforce — including hospital patronages and the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC) — and move toward integrating existing information systems.
Although the SIRHS is supported by a legal framework, participants emphasized the importance of promoting its institutionalization, formalization, and of strengthening national actors’ commitment to its implementation. All parties agreed on the need for collaboration to consolidate an integrated platform.
The strategic recommendations focus on five key pillars: strengthening governance through a binding regulation; standardizing information through a minimum basic data set; ensuring technological interoperability; training personnel and allocating resources; and promoting the strategic use of data for workforce planning.
As a next step, MINSA and PAHO agreed to harmonize information variables across sectoral stakeholders and convene a multisectoral technical meeting in November 2025 to initiate data entry and explore synergies with external institutions.
The meeting, held at the PAHO/WHO Country Office in Panama in coordination with PAHO’s Human Resources for Health Unit of the Department of Health Systems and Services, forms part of a regional initiative to strengthen health workforce information systems, fostering interoperable, sustainable, and evidence-informed structures for decision-making.
